Prompts for discussion of final revisions to final proposal.

1. Santa Clara University English Department
Curriculum Discussion
March 5, 2012

2. May 2009 informal conversations on the subject of
writing in the curriculum & the English studies model.
Various faculty read McComiskey & other scholars on the
subject.
Sep 2009-May 2010 Terry & Eileen ask CC to investigate
English studies model & viability of tracks versus
concentrations. Written feedback on possible
concentrations is solicited from two dozen faculty,
concentration proposal outline approved by EC and
department in sense of meeting conversation.

3. By May 2010, we agreed on the desirability of
changing the curriculum in connection with real
concerns:
Currency, Enrollment,
Hiring, Student Need.

4. 1. Disciplinary Currency
Disciplinary currency: integrated English studies
model with literature, cultural studies, and
writing in positive, productive relationship.

5. 2. Institutionally Appropriate
Offerings
Offerings appropriate to SCU, a regional
comprehensive with a social justice mission
(literature and cultural studies, wgst, multi-ethnic
and global literatures)

6. 3. Offerings Appropriate to Location
Silicon Valley location: new media, science,
technology and society, document design and
technical communication. Information
literacy=digital content production.
SCU Strategic Plan 2B: “Strengthen distinctive
academic niches that will allow us to meet the
needs of Silicon Valley, both locally and in its
global outreach."

7. 4) Grow enrollment & communicate
offerings better
A) We might grow the This could mean:
major and minor by 
fewer courses overall
making them simpler,
more appealing and 
fewer requirements
less arduous for 
more choices
students and faculty.

better communication
B) 1st survey suggests of opportunities
that elective enrollment
might grow with clearer 
offerings framed to
communication of address student
offerings concerns about careers
and postgraduate life.

8. 4a. Address Student Need
Grad school in LCS/GRE readiness
Grad school in writing/digital composition
Employment involving writing/digital composition
Other kinds of graduate/professional school

9. 5. Balance Reading and Writing.
The curriculum is one location to help us address
issues of department culture, power and
resource allocation.
It can help reflect our commitment to balance
between literary consumption and analysis
(reading) and textual production (writing).

10. Bracketed Questions

11. • How does our vision of the renovated
curriculum relate to our hopes to establish a
writing program?
• In what ways can/should CTW classes serve
as an introduction to the possibilities of the
renovated major and minor?
• How can we support greater integration of
digital literacy in first-year writing?
Again: these are questions that we might have
addressed, but ARE NOT addressing at this
time.

12. Key Thought
We didn't go looking for the most radical solution;
we went looking for the most conservative
solution that was still a solution.
Our proposal combines the virtues of the one-
department solution with some of the
nimbleness of the 2-department solutions.
Our ambitions are exclusively additive: we do not
want to alienate any part of our current clientele.
We want to serve them better and attract some
new students as well.

13. Tracks
• Few, large, aggregative, stable.
• More like mini-majors with required courses.
• Changing course requires substantial effort.
• Tend to brand students: "I'm in the writing
track.”
• The agglomeration of items in big tracks is
only modestly effective at communicating the
full range of possibility and choice, esp. in
evolving fields.

14. Concentrations

Many, small, flexible.

New concentrations easily added; failing
concentrations easily pruned.

Work well with changing menus of courses.

Similar to the current system of crafting an
individual concentration, but communicates
those possibilities to students in advance.

15. Concentrations

Would not prevent students from crafting an
entirely unique concentration with an advisor.

Allow students to be interested equally in LCS
and writing. (A very substantial benefit for
students as well as faculty, not to mention
administration.)

16. Time Line, 2010-11
September-October: fog of confusion
November: Formal presentation of framework
agreed to in April-May 2010, together with
survey data; highly positive reception. Open
invitation for changes to framework issued.
January: Revisions based on written and verbal
feedback; survey data from English majors.
February-March; more fog of confusion
April: Department formally endorses framework by
a vote of 23 to 4.

17. Non-English Majors:
Serious Interest in All Writing Fields
Out of 181 respondents,
Career value in most fields: 30-50
Possible minor in most fields: 10-20
Possible major in most fields: about 10
Nearly across the board, writing concentrations
attract at least 2-3 times the expression of
interest in the top four LCS concentrations.

19. Survey of Junior and Senior English
Majors, January 2011
Many, possibly most students would take more
than the minimum number of courses and/or
additional concentrations.
Student interest remained diverse across LCS
and Writing fields, including historical literary
fields.
Students showed substantial interest in the ability
to feature writing and employment-relevant
concentrations on transcripts and in recs.

20. Survey
100% of respondents would voluntarily elect a
Writing concentration.
37% would choose 2 LCS concentrations and 1
Writing concentration.
23% would choose 2 Writing and 1 LCS.
16% would choose 1 of each.

21. Time Line, Fall 2011
September: Retreat features in-depth discussion
of proposal within framework & dept agrees to
staged discussion of a) foundation courses and
b) concentration viability, plus any remaining
concerns leading to a final proposal & vote in
Winter or Spring, saving time for workshopping
syllabi, etc, as proposed by Burnham & Elrod
December: Dept workshops three-course
foundation, and requests prompt vote by margin
of 26-1. English 14, 15, 16 approved by paper
ballot 27-7.

22. Time Line, Winter 2011
January: Further comments on concentrations solicited;
revisions; viability of concentrations confirmed; six
additional course descriptions approved by CC (phase-
in 2-3 per year over 2-3 years).
February: CC discusses framework & remaining
concerns about limited reqs for literary history,
diversity.
March: CC presents revised concentrations and
proposed solution to concerns about limited reqs; takes
verbal and written response; circulates final best
compromise for up or down vote.

23. Time Line, Spring 2011
April-May
If proposal rejected; all options open for new
curriculum committee, which should be
composed of persons with a compelling
alternate vision.
If accepted; syllabus workshops, fine-tuning
concentrations, development of
communications, & implementation. Planning for
assessment & more intentional course offerings.

24. Approved Framework

25. Concentrations in Two Groups:
Literature and Cultural Studies
Writing, including Creative Writing

26. Major in English
A minimum of 12 courses beyond CTW, including
3 foundation classes: English 14, 15, 16.
From the available electives: Choose at least
one course before 1800, a senior seminar, and
at least two concentrations.
Recommended but not required: Choose one
concentration from LCS and one from Writing.

27. Minor in English

A minimum of 5 classes, including one
foundation course

At least one concentration

28. Minor in Creative Writing
Unchanged.

29. Approved Foundations

30. ENGL 14. Introduction to Literary
History and Interpretation.
Literature and our understanding of it are
constantly changing. This course surveys
canonical and marginalized works in cultural and
historical context. It examines the way texts shape
and reference each other, and the consequences
of technological change. Readings are chosen
from literatures available in English in various
genres and periods.

31. ENGL 15. Introduction to Cultural
Studies and Literary Theory.
Exploration of ways to think about the
relationships among literature, culture, and
society. Students will experiment with techniques
of reading, interpretation, and intervention -- with
particular emphasis on those methods drawn from
critical theory, studies in colonialism, cultural
anthropology, feminism, semiotics, gay/lesbian
studies, historicism, and psychoanalytic theory.

32. ENGL 16. Introduction to Writing
and Digital Publication.
Introduction to current scholarship and major
issues in writing studies, including digital literacy
and publication. Readings will cover such topics
as: civic discourse and rhetorics of social justice;
composition and multiliteracies; argumentation
and logic; visual rhetoric and principles of design.
Participants will publish their coursework in an
electronic portfolio.

33. Remaining Concerns
“Straw poll” on literary history requirement:
25 Votes:
9 @ 1 course before 1800
11 @More than 1 course before1800
5 @ Other
Smaller concerns regarding particular diversity
requirements, an additional theory course, etc.

34. Recommendation
The Curriculum Committee recommends that we
attempt to resolve these 2 remaining concerns
about distribution requirements with
recommendations to students,
rather than requirements.

35. Ways to Recommend
1. We might have many recommendations: about
diversity, periodization, genres, attention to
theory, even taking more than the minimum
number of courses (“The minimum is 12, but
many will take 15 or more. The registrar can
feature as many as 3 concentrations on your
transcript.”)
2. We might have all faculty communicate
individual recommendations on the website.
(“Don't graduate without reading Milton!”)

36. Ways to Recommend
3. In advising and meetings of majors & minors.
4. On a department blog to which majors and
minors can contribute.
5. Each concentration will have groups of affiliated
faculty and its own web page. The page, and the
faculty contributing to it can provide individualized
detailed suggestions.
6. A real or virtual bookshelf of must-read texts.

37. Choice: Recommending vs
Requiring
Advantages of requiring: more coherent
experience, easier to predict/ensure head count
in some classes; more likely to succeed at
particular goals (eg gre readiness/prep for
certain grad programs).

38. Choice: Recommending vs
Requiring
Disadvantages of requiring: more coherent
experience—ie, some students will experience
as irrelevant or an imposition, because the
particular goals won't apply). Fewer electives for
students=fewer non-survey courses can be
offered. Less flexibility for individual students;
advising can become about reqs and/or working
around them, not student needs & development.
Appeal of the major and minor drops.

39. Choice: Recommending vs
Requiring
As a choice, recommending is not just the
absence of requirements. It's a positive choice
fostering good matches between faculty and
student interests, placing individual student
needs and the learning relationship at the
center. Overall it's potentially a very welcome
culture choice.

40. Choice: Recommending vs
Requiring
3. Survey: Are requirements necessary? Can
advising address issues for individual students
(Concentrations provide better matches.)
4. Are required courses the only or best solution
to all of our concerns—eg GRE readiness, grad
school in LCS? What about other forms of
support for students with those interests?
5. Annual assessments: If a recommendation
scenario isn't working, we can always adjust
and add requirements later.

41. Phyllis Brown, Remarks on
Literature & Literary History
Changing away from a coverage model and:
• From an undergraduate literature major to an
English Studies major
• From an understanding of literature as serving
representational functions to serving socially
formative functions.
Question: What role should literary history play in
what students are required to know? Should the
writing of literary history be something they
learn to do?

42. Terry Beers, Revised List of
LCS Concentrations
• American Literature and • Women, Sex, & Gender
Culture
• Literature of the Americas
• Literary and Cultural
Theory • Classical and Contemporary
Rhetoric
• British Literature and
Culture • Medieval, Renaissance &
Early Modern Studies
• Literary History
• Spirituality and Literature
• Literature and Social
Change • Literature and the
Environment
• Literature and Writing for
Young Readers • World Literature
• Race, Ethnicity and Culture • Genre
• Cinema

43. Revised List of Writing
Concentrations
Writing in Digital Environments
Business Communication
Advocacy, Public Discourse & Social Change
English Education and Pedagogy
Science and Technical Communication
Creative Writing
Literacy and Community
Legal and Medical Communication
Language and Linguistics

44. Contact: Marc Bousquet
pmbousquet (at) gmail.com